<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>He Loves You, You Idiot by irrationalgame</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29174037">He Loves You, You Idiot</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/irrationalgame/pseuds/irrationalgame'>irrationalgame</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Thommy Valentine’s 2021 [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Downton Abbey</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Fluff, M/M, Mutual Pining, Valentine's Challenge</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 00:21:37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,566</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29174037</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/irrationalgame/pseuds/irrationalgame</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jimmy withdraws, Thomas worries.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Thomas Barrow/Jimmy Kent</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Thommy Valentine’s 2021 [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2141706</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>67</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Well I love you: Valentines for Thomas Barrow</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>He Loves You, You Idiot</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For the prompt:<br/>1. (...) has been acting strange lately. Did I do something wrong?” "They’re in love with you, you idiot.”</p><p> Unbeta’d and written in a late night mania. </p><p>Well I did one prompt. Late. I’ll try for another!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jimmy was an odd duck. Thomas allowed himself to think it now, having known Jimmy for so many years, and having loved him almost as long as he’d known him. He thought it with affection, not judgement, and would happily verbally scalp anyone else who dared to sound like they might be suggesting it. It was an endearment, like the way Jimmy called him <em>mardy</em> or <em>old</em>, which never ceased to entertain the footman, despite the joke being well past its best.</p><p>And, much like Jimmy’s pet insults, it was true. Thomas was old(ish) and mardy. Jimmy was odd. Thomas didn’t mind any of it.</p><p>On first appearances Jimmy had seemed like any normal, albeit ridiculously handsome, young man one might meet on the street. He was cocky and cheeky and held himself with the swagger of a someone who knew he was good looking. He charmed and talked and blagged his way though life as if everything were easy and nothing mattered all that much anyway. It hadn’t taken Thomas very long to realise this was all smoke and mirrors - Jimmy was only certain in his uncertainty. He was oddly maudlin for a man who claimed to dream of travelling and partying and floating through life on a good time. He read books and papers and thought more deeply about things than he’d let on to the rest of his colleagues. He liked the lightness and escape of musical theatre, and the darkness and realism of poetry. He might smile and crack along at one joke and sneer at the next. Thomas had been snapped at more than most; perhaps because Jimmy knew he’d let him get away with it or perhaps because Thomas was the only one he felt like he could show what was beneath the veneer.</p><p>Sometimes, when they were alone, Jimmy would drop out little pieces of himself with an affected tone of lightness, even though the weight of the words themselves made them fall heavily into the space between them like lead bars. It could be a <em>‘slept in the gutter for a month after this job fell through’</em> or <em>‘never had a birthday card since me mum died’</em> or any number of desperately important things that Thomas clung to like scattered pieces of the puzzle that was Jimmy Kent, hoping one day he’d collect enough to make a whole image.</p><p>Thomas never knew what to say, even though he’d schooled and prepared himself for the next truth. He was certain his <em>‘oh really’</em>s and <em>‘you never’</em>s were wrong, but he’d not had much practice at people randomly spilling their heart out to him. He’d not had that much practice at just talking to people at all.</p><p>At any rate, this strange exchange of bits of Jimmy for Thomas’s platitudes went on for months before, as suddenly as they’d begun, they dried up like a stream in the mid-August heat. And Thomas was left parched by it.</p><p>Then Jimmy withdrew further; he stopped staying up to play cards or idly plunk at the piano. He never popped in to Thomas’s room in the evenings for a drink. Finally, in move that might as well have torn Thomas’s still beating heart from his chest and tossed it into the nearest sewer, Jimmy stopped coming out into the yard to smoke.</p><p>Jimmy was civil still - thankfully it wasn’t like that awful year when the footman had hated him - but that was it. He only spoke if Thomas instigated it. He barely even looked at Thomas anymore, even when the under-butler was giving him instruction on his work. Thomas wanted to grab his face and scream at him to explain what had happened, because he couldn’t understand what he’d done this time.</p><p>Thomas knew with a certainty it was <em>his</em> fault. Of course it was. When something went south between himself and another human being, it was invariably Thomas who was at fault. That was just how things were; Thomas destroyed goodness. It was made so much worse this time for not knowing exactly what it was he’d done to lose the only proper friend he’d ever had.</p><p>And Jimmy seemed to be fairing badly himself. He looked tired and drawn, like he’d fallen into a perpetual dark mood he couldn’t be lifted from. He never played the piano. He pushed food around his plate. He hardly ever had a cutting remark or a snotty comment for Alfred anymore. Despite the fact Jimmy head neatly cut Thomas’s friendship away like a dead limb, Thomas still loved him and the sting of it had been renewed by the sudden amputation. And, beyond his own suffering, he was concerned for Jimmy’s well-being. Thusly he worried and mithered and fretted about the situation until he was a nervous wreck himself.</p><p>Something had to be done.</p><p>As surreptitiously as possible he started to ask around as for any reason Jimmy might be so unhappy. Asking Alfred was as useful as talking to a simple child, and twice as annoying. Ivy didn’t have two thoughts to rub together. Daisy looked at the under-butler as if he’d grown a second head. Mrs Hughes just frowned and said he seemed quiet, but that if Thomas didn’t know the reasons, then she wasn’t sure why he expected <em>her</em> to know. It seemed the rest of the staff knew Jimmy so little they hadn’t even really noticed something was dreadfully wrong.  </p><p>It was entirely frustrating and Thomas was on the verge of giving in completely and just having it out with the footman, for good or ill. He passed through the kitchen, which was warm and blissfully empty, so he plonked down on a chair, his elbows on Mrs Patmore’s desk, and let his head rest in his hands with a sigh.</p><p>“Wassamatter with you then, Mr Barrow?” Mrs Patmore said. Thomas started - he had been so caught up in his own misery he hadn’t heard her come in.</p><p>“Nothing’s the matter with <em>me</em>,” he replied.</p><p>“Then why, pray tell, are you sittin’ in me kitchen lookin’ like you’ve the weight of the world on your shoulders, eh?”</p><p>Thomas shook his head and made to shrug it off, but the cook magicked up a cup of tea and a biscuit from somewhere, which made him much more inclined to stay for a moment.</p><p>“I just—” he huffed - talking to Mrs Patmore about his worries was a new personal low, “I’m worried about someone and I don’t know what to do.”</p><p>He ate the biscuit and Mrs Patmore placed another at his elbow.</p><p>“Don’t think I need to be a mind reader to work out who you’re on about,” she said. “He’s walkin’ ‘round with a face like a smacked behind.”</p><p>A third biscuit appeared to replace the last.</p><p>“Jimmy has been acting strange lately. Did I do something wrong?” Thomas asked honestly.</p><p>Thomas thought the answer must be very grave indeed, as Mrs Patmore placed a stack of three biscuits on the table. “He’s in love with you, you idiot.”</p><p>Thomas blinked then pulled his face into a thunderous scowl, ready to shoot down this dangerous and, frankly, unfunny idea.</p><p>“Don’t start all tha’ nonsense with me, Thomas Barrow,” Mrs Patmore interjected. “You’ve been stealing treats from me kitchen you since you were a boy. I know you better than you’d like, I wager, and I see the way you look at him.”</p><p>“I don’t - I don’t know what you mean,” he said, rather lamely.</p><p>Mrs Patmore smirked and added another biscuit to the stack. “Of course you don’t. But he looks at you in the same way, when he thinks no one can see him. And frankly, I’m sick to the back teeth of him moping ‘round me kitchen, gettin’ under me feet and stealin’ cakes. Sort it out, Mr Barrow. For all our sakes.” She placed a final biscuit down on the worn-wood of the tabletop and shuffled off to do something unpleasant with a chicken.</p><p>Thomas ate all the biscuits and drank the tea, ruminating. Mrs Patmore had nothing to gain from lying. They’d not exactly been <em>friends</em>, but he’d never wished her ill and, as far as he knew, the feeling was mutual.</p><p>But it just seemed so unbelievable that the renowned botherer of women Jimmy Kent was interested in <em>Thomas</em>.</p><p>Except, of course, all Jimmy’s apparent romantic escapades had come to nothing. Ivy had long since lost interest. There had been a girl from the shop then a girl from the pub then a farmer’s daughter - none of which Thomas had ever seen - and who had all, apparently, also come to nothing. Jimmy had boasted of his conquests to Alfred and the gaping hall boys, but in private had revealed, to his embarrassment, that he’d only ever been with Lady Anstruther, and not even that had really been his choice.</p><p>As always, Thomas hadn’t known what to say and the conversation was over as quickly as it had begun.</p><p>Smoke and mirrors indeed.</p><p>Thomas was forced to leave his musings at the kitchen table as he was summoned by Carson to come and organise a wine delivery. He descended the cellar stairs wearily; the coolness of the room and weight of the crates and bottles always made his Blighty ache and his back sore. Being put in charge of the wine was both a sign he’d gained some trust and, somehow, a reminder he was still a skivvy and would likely be until the day he died. Butlers were, after all, just the head skivvy in a nice suit.</p><p>To his surprise someone had already started shifting the crates to the shelves beyond the metal bars that marked the wine cellar proper. Thomas rounded one of the shelving units to see Jimmy, golden hair like spun silk in the low orange light, his tails stretched over the muscles of his back as he hefted a crate with the clanking of a dozen bottles.</p><p>“Ah,” Thomas said, and had to hide a grimace at the way Jimmy didn’t even look up at him, “thank you.”</p><p>“Carson roped me in,” Jimmy replied, “something about saving your back as he was sick of you complaining about it.”</p><p>Thomas smirked at that; help was help, no matter how it had been won. His back would thank him even if Jimmy wouldn’t.</p><p>“An’ we can’t have your back giving out, old man,” Jimmy added, his eyes focused on the array of claret to his left. There was a hint of the old camaraderie in his tone, that almost-affection that Thomas had cherished.</p><p>“Jimmy,” Thomas said, unable and unwilling to ignore what Mrs Patmore had said. It was as if the words had been seared into his brain and branded into his heart to replay over and over with each beat: <em>he’s in love with you, he’s in love with you, he’s in love with you</em>. “Please tell me what I’ve done wrong. I can’t stand this.”</p><p>Jimmy dropped the crate he was lifting with a clatter. “You haven’t done anything.”</p><p>“Then why?” Thomas sounded positively <em>desperate</em>, and he hated himself for it.</p><p>“It’s me.” The footman sat on the edge of the crate and worried his lip between his teeth. “I’m at fault. I have been since the day we first met.”</p><p>Thomas fingered a particularly expensive bottle of red, the gold label thick and textured beneath his fingers. The urge to pick the thing up and smash it into oblivion on the dirty-bricked wall was great.</p><p>“I treated you badly,” Jimmy said, head tipped forwards so his eyes disappeared behind a curtain of golden hair, “I have all along. It’s no wonder you’ve - you’ve grown bored of me.”</p><p>Thomas blinked. “What?”</p><p>Jimmy’s head snapped up, eyes red-rimmed and wreathed in dark circles. “I thought maybe I still had a chance, that maybe you still—” he shook his head, “but I’ve missed the boat. I never know what’s good for me until it’s too late.”</p><p>Thomas felt as if he was watching a film where the scenes and the cards had gotten mixed up and he was having to piece the plot together backwards.</p><p>“Jimmy I - and I mean this with all seriousness - I have no clue what you’re talking about,” he said.</p><p>Jimmy’s brow creased. “What?”</p><p>Thomas gave him what he hoped was an earnest and imploring look.</p><p>“Don’t give me that,” he hissed, “I kept tryin’ to tell you things - to explain meself and you - you weren’t interested.”</p><p>“Yes I was, Jimmy, of course I was—”</p><p>“You never said anything. I kept tellin’ you all these secrets - things I’ve locked up for years—” he stood, more impassioned than Thomas had seen him for weeks, “an’ you acted like I was reading the football scores. Like it was nothing. So I knew you didn’t - you must’ve stopped—” he shook his head, his expression grave. “It’s alright. It’s what I deserve.”</p><p>Thomas wasn’t often speechless but Jimmy’s outburst had rendered him mute. <em>That</em> was what it was all about?</p><p>“You thought I didn’t care?” Thomas said, and took a step towards Jimmy. “You bloody idiot. Of course I care. I care so much I was - I was afraid of saying the wrong thing and putting you off. You’re not exactly fond of talking about feelings.”</p><p>“Pffft,” Jimmy gave an exasperated sort of sigh. “I know. I’m useless. You’re not much better.”</p><p>Thomas nodded. “Perhaps we both need to try a bit harder to let the other know how we feel.”</p><p>Jimmy’s blue eyes searched Thomas’s face for something, a sign perhaps, so he let his expression slip into unguarded affection and the corners of Jimmy’s lips quirked up.</p><p>“You mean you do still? After all?”</p><p>“Of course I do, you silly clot,” Thomas sighed, “as if I could ever stop if I wanted to.”</p><p>Without warning Jimmy was up against him, pushing his back into the shelving with the ringing of a hundred bottles of wine clunking against each other fighting for dominance with the singing of Thomas’s blood in his ears. Jimmy was kissing him desperately, his fingers crumpling the lapels of his livery, his eyes pressed so tightly shut it looked painful. Thomas stood stock-still, his back aching where the edge of a shelf had met his spine, as Jimmy’s lips worked against his, until he could contain himself no longer and grasped the footman with urgent hands. That was all the encouragement Jimmy needed to slide his tongue between Thomas’s lips with a moan that seemed to travel directly to Thomas’s groin.</p><p>“Jimmy,” he said, pulling away just enough to look into the footman’s smiling face. It was as if he’d been lit up from within or given a new coat of much-needed paint; he was <em>glowing</em>. Thomas couldn’t help but grin back at him, his fears melting.</p><p>“Thomas,” he said breathily, “I’ve - I’m—”</p><p>“You’re in love with me, you idiot.”</p><p>Jimmy laughed, a bright sound like the peal of a very deep bell, and one Thomas thought he’d heard far too little of over the years.</p><p>“You’re a cocky bastard,” he said, and kissed Thomas’s jaw, “but you’re always bloody right about everything. It’s horrible.”</p><p>“You’re horrible.”</p><p>“Yeah. But you love me—” Jimmy paused, his brows drawn together in sudden uncertainty, “don’t you?”</p><p>Thomas grinned, shark-like and immensely happy. “Of course I do, you idiot.”</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>